Preliminary Task

For our preliminary task we had to film a short conversation and simple transaction between two characters. We had to obey the 180 degrees rule, this is that the camera needs to view the two people in the shot from the same side. This is important especially in shot-reverse shot as it can confuse the audience, it will make the two people switch sides which wouldn't make sense to anyone watching it.


We also needed to have match on action. This is when the camera films the same shot viewed from different angels, this makes it more dramatic and can give the impression of urgency.
It was part of the task that we included shot-reverse shot. This is a technique that has two different ways of doing it, they both are used for a two way conversation. The camera switches between the points of view of both characters as the other one is speaking, you see from As' point of view while B is talking and you see from B's point of view while A is talking. Or when B is talking you see over the shoulder of A and when A is talking the audience sees over B's shoulder. When we did our preliminary task we used the latter because this way it involves both characters at the same time in each shot.

There were four people in our group, 2 actors, 1 cameraman and a director. Everyone contributed to the idea and helped with shots.


We started with close up of feet walking up the stairs, this was showing the movement of the character and wasn't meant to fully introduce the character. From that we had a zoomed shot of a door handle which obviously signifies someone entering a room. Then we finally see our first character enter the room, greeting someone behind the camera then she sits down. This is when our audience gets a shock which they may not recover from easily, with the rules of shot reverse shot the camera switched between over the shoulder shots. A man dressed in womans clothing and wearing a very blond wig, this was mainly for the comedy effect but also gained our audiences attention.


As the female and the female impersonator are having their conversation the camera switches between the two in shot-reverse shot, making sure to always shoot on their left hand side this keeps in the 180 degrees rule. This created a problem, our location was a small toilet, it was hard getting the camera in the right position. Once he got the hang of it it was alright, especially as we had to do in camera editing so we couldn't film all one side of the conversation then the next as we didnt have access to the editing suit. We had to film one line, move the camera then film the next. This was not very productive filming as it wasted alot of time that could have been spend making the piece better or longer.

After the conversation section the male character dressed as a female needed to get something out of his purse. This seemed a good moment for our match on action. Unzipping the purse was filmed from different angels and at the end the product being handed over was zoomed in on.
Then there was close up of the product passing from one hand to the next, then the girl who first entered the rooms happy face and her thanking the dressed up male.

This task was alot harder than first interpreted, this was mainly because of the in camera editing. It was to make the task very basic but insted made it alot more complicated and come out with less than satisfactory results. As we couldnt rewatch our footage as it possibley would mess up the order, also if we didnt film it perfect first time then we would have to redo teh whole thing, if on the editing suits we could edit the bad bits out.